Agroecological knowledge exchange on social media: Factors influencing UK farmers’ engagement

Al-Futaih, Miriam

Abstract

Agricultural systems in the United Kingdom currently face challenges related to food security, climate change, and policy uncertainty. While adopting sustainable farming systems is vital for meeting the current environmental challenges and for ensuring the future of food and ecosystem security, it is essential to find solutions that also support farmers’ livelihoods. However, farmers’ transition to sustainable agriculture is complex, needing new practices to reduce emissions and improve soil health and food production resilience. Contrary to knowledge of conventional farming, which is widely available, knowledge of sustainable farming practices is less accessible and takes longer to acquire. Thus, to successfully adopt effective agricultural and environmental management practices while maintaining productivity, farmers need not only access to reliable and context-specific knowledge but also effective knowledge exchange (KE) strategies that involve various knowledge actors, including farmers, researchers, and advisors, allowing scientific knowledge and farmers’ knowledge to mutually enrich one another. Social media is now a widespread tool for interacting and communicating within the wider farming community, allowing farmers to share their views and experiences, as well as their successes and failures, with others While social media holds significant potential for promoting and enhancing KE by facilitating connections among various actors and enabling the flow of agricultural knowledge and information, the factors influencing KE remain underexplored. Further, new KE processes and the changing dynamics between knowledge actors on social media introduce new needs and challenges that are still insufficiently explored. While prior research has acknowledged the significance of social media for agricultural KE, it has largely overlooked the reasons behind farmers' engagement in KE on social media, often exploring the ‘how’ of farmers’ engagement and not the ‘why’. Therefore, this study investigated the factors influencing farmers’ agroecological knowledge exchange on social media. To examine this, a mixed-method approach was used. Employing two main frameworks, this study systematically structured and analysed farmers’ KE processes and the factors influencing them on social media. This study provides valuable insights into how factors such as motivation, ability, and opportunity, along with moderating factors like fear, trust and expert drivers and barriers to KE, influence farmers' KE. It found that farmers were driven by their desire to learn and share knowledge to help others (intrinsic motivation) or their need for social recognition and financial incentives (extrinsic motivation). Moreover, farmers’ knowledge self-efficacy and ability to utilise social media platforms influenced farmers' knowledge sharing. Additionally, farmers’ preferences for specific social media platforms were found to influence their engagement in KE with other actors. Similarly, social media affordances either facilitate or hinder farmers’ KE on social media, specifically for connecting to, accessing, and revisiting knowledge. Finally, fear, trust, and the drivers and barriers to knowledge actors’ KE were identified as influential. While farmers learned to manage both fear and trust when engaging in KE on social media, expert drivers and barriers to KE limited farmers’ engagement with knowledge actors on social media, thereby affecting their access to scientific knowledge. This study enhances the understanding of agricultural KE on social media and also provides insights that inform theory and practice.

• Thesis Type: Thesis
• Deposit Date: Apr 30, 2025
• Publicly Available Date: Nov 14, 2025
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/14343013
• Award Date: Nov 14, 2025